WNET Shares Best Practices of Exemplary Principals in New

"School Leadership in Action" Videos

Free video collection available on PBS LearningMedia and The Wallace Foundation websites

New York, April 21, 2015 - WNET announces the launch of School Leadership in Action: Principal Profiles, a free collection of videos that bring to life the five key practices of exemplary principals. The collection is available on PBS LearningMedia and The Wallace Foundation websites beginning today. The New York Times featured the videos last week in this op-ed about the importance of school principals.

In the five videos, each about 12 minutes long, the camera follows exemplary principals into their schools and offers an up-close look at what they do to improve teaching and lift student achievement. The videos show the principals interacting with students, teachers, and other administrators and using effective strategies to make their schools successful. The collection is intended for principals, aspiring principals and those who train and support principals so that they will see effective practices firsthand and be inspired by these outstanding principals.    

"WNET's 'School Leadership in Action' videos demonstrate the high standards of quality leaders and how principals are essential to improving student achievement and school success," says Gail Connelly, executive director, National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP). "The videos will help aspiring, new and experienced principals and are a valuable source of information on best practices surrounding effective instructional leadership."

Filmed in schools in Hillsborough County, Fla., Gwinnett County, Ga., Prince George's County, Md., and New York City, each video focuses on one of five essential practices central to shaping instructional leadership. Those practices were detailed in The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching ... (Wallace, January 2013). They are:

1. Shaping a vision of academic success for all students.
2. Creating a climate hospitable to education.
3. Cultivating leadership in others.
4. Improving instruction.
5. Managing people, data and processes to foster school improvement.

WNET also has produced accompanying support materials that can be integrated into a school system's or university's leadership programs/curriculum. The videos are appropriate for both formal and information learning settings as well as for directed and self-directed learning.

These videos are part of WNET's growing repository of videos for principals and those who support their professional growth and development. They complement the series of school leadership videos "Critical Conversations about School Leadership," previously posted on PBS LearningMedia. Those videos include 55 short segments based on events in 2013 by top education leaders discussing what it takes to get exceptional principals in all schools.

School Leadership in Action: Principal Profiles is funded by The Wallace Foundation and produced by THIRTEEN Productions LLC in association with WNET. The School Leadership in Action: Principal Profiles videos can be found here: http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/leadership-in-action/.